"From Jewish Scribes to Christian Scriptoria?: Issues of Continuity and Discontinuity in their Greek Literary Worlds"

by Robert A. Kraft, University of Pennsylvania Emeritus

Introduction and Context

The path from early Jewish to early Christian scribal practices is difficult to map. That there were some connections is highly probable, given the Jewish origins of the earliest followers of Jesus and the positive use of Jewish scriptures by many early Christian individuals and groups. I have argued elsewhere that early Christian scribal practices such as the use of spacing to divide sense units (or even words), the use of marginal section markers, and some related format features were probably learned or borrowed from Jewish techniques. Somewhat less easily documented, but no less probable in my mind is the transition from Jewish treatment of the tetragrammaton as a special "term" to early Christian development of "nomina sacra" conventions. Finally, I strongly suspect that even the appropriation of the codex in early Christian circles is at least partly indebted to Jewish experimentation with book formats, although possible evidence for that suspicion falls short of demonstration. The extent to which such scribal practices may have been unusual in the larger Greco-Roman world of texts and documents is my present concern, and whether we can learn anything useful from investigating that larger context.

Jewish and Christian Scribal Techniques and Greco-Roman "Literature"

The impression left by specialists in the study of the "high literature" of the Greco-Roman world is that the sorts of scribal features mentioned above were not typical -- at least not of the texts produced for the most discriminating buyers or patrons. The late Colin H. Roberts (1909-1990) was one of the most authoritative, in terms of papyrological credentials, and probably the most outspoken on such issues. In his closely argued Schweich Lectures for 1977 (published as Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, Oxford Press 1979) he repeatedly appeals to "documentary" practices to describe features of the earliest (mostly second century) Christian texts that he explores. For example he summarizes: "From this survey of the externals of our earliest Christian manuscripts we can conclude that their writing is based, with some changes and with a few exceptions, on the model of the documents, not on that of Greek classical manuscripts nor on that of the Greco-Jewish tradition" (20).\1/

Actually, Roberts seems to be caught between papyrological judgments carried over from the earlier 20th century (see his 1949 article "The Christian Book and the Greek Papyri," JTS 50: 155-168),\2/ and new insights emerging partly due to the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls and partly from criticisms of the "old" approach made especially in a 1973 article article by papyrologist Kurt Treu (1928-1991). Thus the 1977 Roberts\3/ acknowledges that there may well have been some Jewish influences on early Christian scribal techniques -- he is now even willing to change his mind and admit a 2nd century codex as probably Jewish (pp. 12 and 76, on POxy 656 of Genesis\4/; possibly also POxy 1007 of Genesis\5/). Tucked away in his note 2 on p. 15 he conjectures that "some of these early O.T. texts [which he considers to be Christian in origin] may have been copied from better written Jewish manuscripts in which such literary practices as the use of iota adscript would have been usual." Or again, "documentary practice may not have been the only influence on Christian scribes. In the manuscript of the Minor Prophets found in a cave ... in Judaea and dated between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50, an enlarged letter, preceded by a small blank space, marks the beginning of a new phrase, while verses are marked off by larger spaces. This may well have been standard Hebrew usage in texts such as this, clearly intended for liturgical reading" (18). In a footnote, he opines that "this might indicate that the method of paragraphing by the initial letter was of Jewish origin" (n.3; he could not have known the Esther papyrus POxy 4443). And again, "Scrupulous reproduction of the text" as attested by careful correction of some Christian manuscripts also "may be a legacy from Judaism" (22) -- a rather ambiguous judgment at best since it presupposes carelessness in copying on the part of the initial scribe! But despite all that, he still wants to maintain that there is a significant "contrast between the plain, quasi-documentary hand of the earliest Christian papyri and the formal elegance of Jewish manuscripts" (75 -- here he seems to be thinking only of the Rylands fragments and Fouad 266 for the Jewish evidence), although he admits that "the style of these Jewish manuscripts needs closer examination and definition than they have as yet been given" (76 n.4).

I have great respect for Colin Roberts as an expert, even a pioneer in various papyrological and codicological matters, but he certainly does not distinguished himself as a reliable guide for reconstructing the history of early Jewish and early Christian scribal practices. His knowledge of Judaism seems rather limited and somewhat myopic -- what are we to make of the claim that "to judge from their hands, the earliest Christian books were essentially books for use, not, as Jewish Rolls of the Law sometimes were, almost cult objects; that was only possible for a publicly recognized and protected cult so that the Christian equivalent is not found before the great codices of the fourth century" (15). Perhaps the "sometimes" saves him somewhat, but it is still a historically careless statement by someone who demonstrably wants to draw a definite line between Judaism and Christianity whenever possible.\6/

A more nuanced type of statement comes from Peter Parsons, a leading senior papyrologist of the present generation, in discussing the Greek Minor Prophets scroll(s) from Nahal Hever: "...The use of enlarged initials at line-beginning (hands A and B) and phrase-beginning (hand A) and (set out in the margin) to mark a new section (hand A) gives this manuscript a documentary look. ... The fact is itself remarkable. Early Christian books show the same characteristic; copies of the Greek classics do not. It has therefore been tempting to argue that the texts of the Early Church stood closer to the world of business than to that of literature, and to draw conclusions about the social milieu in which the texts circulated or the esteem in which they were held. Now we see the same thing in a Jewish manuscript of pre-Christian date. This may suggest that the Christians inherited the practice, rather than inventing it; the problem remains, why Greek-speaking Jews should have adopted it in the first place" (DJD 8 [1990] 23f).\7/

Towards Some Solutions, or at least Clearer Questions

That is the question -- or at least one of the questions raised by this attention to codicological and scrollological features of the early Jewish and early Christian materials. What does the presence of such phenomena, on both the early Jewish and the early Christian side of the artificial divide that we have inherited tell us about continuities and discontinuities, origins and adaptations, social context and scriptoria?

First off, with Colin Roberts, we should recognize that there is a clear difference in calligraphy between some of the early Jewish Greek texts and most of the early Christian. Peter Parsons puts it this way in his overall comparisons of the various Dead Sea Scroll Greek scripts: "This makes it clear that serifed hands are common enough (but not universal) in Judaean material assignable to the period i B.C.-i A.D." (25). Roberts would agree. But what is the significance of such an observation for our purposes? That kind of calligraphy was going out of style in the Greco-Roman world at large by the first century CE, so we can hardly be surprised that it is not represented in the second century Christian -- or for that matter Jewish -- texts.

Secondly, as Roberts was well aware, there are many different kinds of "documentary" hands and formats, so lumping them together somehow in general statements is of little help. At one point Roberts is more precise, at least with reference to the use of ekthesis -- "in secular literary texts [ekthesis] ... is confined in the Roman period to commentaries and lists" (18). "Secular literary texts" such as "commentaries and lists"? These are not the "calligraphic" texts to which Roberts normally refers when speaking of the "literature" of the period. Yet his comment is on target. Most of the "unusual" or even "documentary" scribal practices that we have been discussing are well attested in those texts that are sometimse dubbed "semi-literary" or even "sub-literary." The most recent terminology I have seen, and with which I have great sympathy, is "paraliterary." Early calligraphic serifed style aside, most of the early Jewish texts and many of the early Christian ones exhibit "paraliterary" features ("lectional signs") such as appear in commentarial literature of the same period.\8/

Can this observation tell us anything about the scribes, their training, the readers of what they produced, the world in which they operated? Were they selfconsciously functioning as scholars, who make commentaries, or "mythographers" creating descriptions and lists? At least it does not seem to have been an isolated world, scribally speaking, whether they recognized it or not. One might argue for relative isolation, if a strong case is made for the early Christian scribes acquiring their habits from Jewish forebears in a closed social context, but it seems unlikely that such isolation from the rest of the scribal world could be maintained for long in either the early Jewish or the early Christian settings in hellenistic Egypt. Was some early Jewish Greek scribal practice at least relatively isolated from what was going on around it? Roberts might have been tempted to say yes, given his relatively simplististic image of early Judaism, but even then we are left with Parson's question of "why Greek-speaking Jews should have adopted it in the first place"! We have a real paleographical paradox, in our present state of knowledge, with sophisticated serifed calligraphy on the one hand, and numerous paraliterary features on the other. I have no clear answers at this point, mostly questions. But it does seem to me impossible to revert to a picture of early Jewish and early Christian scribal practices that fails to recognize these basic continuities -- which make me all the more alert to the possibility of further continuities (e.g. with regard to nomina sacra and codices) that need to be explored more carefully in the wider context of Greco-Roman paraliterary endeavors.

Appendix: Selected Examples

1. Calligraphic sophistication with paraliterary features and possibly "Jewish" interests (Solomon's judicial wisdom) --

3. Paraliterary style and features with apparently Christian content (see also Egerton 2 Gospel) --

4. Other texts, including commentaries, with various paraliterary features --

//end//

Miscellaneous Notes from Colin Roberts, especially

\2/ Already in 1949, discussing early Christian use of the papyrus codex format, Roberts writes that "in the final stage the format used for Christian literature [i.e. the codex] was used for the O.T. as well. This was a step of great importance; the roll of the Law was sacrosanct to the Jew and we know with what reverence the sacred rolls were regarded in the synagogues of the dispersion. Such a treatment of the Jewish scriptures implies that by the middle of the second century Christian communities were emancipated from Jewish influences and Christian writings were regarded as providing the norm for the whole corpus of sacred literature to a degree not hitherto suspected. These developments could not have taken place had the parchment codex not been used by the Christians of Rome in the first century" (161). Further, "It has been remarked that the early Christians were literate rather than literary; in the world of freedmen, slaves, small business men, of whom the earliest communities in Italy may have been largely composed, classical literature would hardly have been known and the obvious form for memoranda or any writings not aspiring to the dignity of literature would have been the parchment note-book [i.e. codex]. (For those who were Jews there would have been no competition [from the codex as a format] at this very early stage with the sacred rolls of the Law.)" (162). Then: "All of the earliest group of Christian texts ... are written in hands which in varying degrees are blends of the pure literary and the documentary hand, such as would be used by men who were aware that they were not copying a business document or letter (work to which they would be accustomed) but were not trained calligraphers. Such a hand, clear and practical ... is not what one would expect to find used for literary texts and yet has a quality that distinguishes it from the ordinary business hand. As such it reflects well the circle for which it was written, since Christians were not writing literature and the canons of Greek literature, whether in writing or format, do not apply; further, because of its affinities with the documentary hand, it is easier to date than that of most literary texts" (167-168). Finally, he refers to Harnack's contention that the Christian scriptures were more or less public, and affirms that "their private study was not merely permitted to but incumbent on the laity. Of this attitude, itself a legacy from Judaism, confirmation ... can be found in the number, the distribution, the great variety in type of book of the papyri" (168).

\3/ Roberts largely maintains these positions in his famous Schweich Lectures of 1977, published in 1979 as Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt. In his first appendix, responding to the objections by Kurt Treu (1973) to the arbitrariness of criteria used to distinguish Christian from Jewish copies of Greek Jewish scriptures ("OT"). Roberts alludes to "the contrast between the plain, quasi-documentary hand of the earliest Christian papyri and the formal elegance of Jewish manuscripts" (75 -- he seems to be thinking only of the Rylands fragments and Fouad 266 for the Jewish evidence at this point). Later, he suggests that "there seems to have been a distinctive style of writing [i.e. "the character of the script"] used for Jewish copies of the scriptures in Greek from the second century B.C. onwards and still used, with modifications of course, down to the third century A.D.; [footnote: the style of these Jewish manuscripts needs closer examination and definition than they have as yet been given, especially in the use of serifs (for these see GMAW, p.25)] ... But not all Greek manuscripts known to be Jewish are written in this style, witness the roll of the Minor Prophets ..., and parallels to it can be found among the secular literary papyri" (76). Parsons adds, in his comparisons of the various Dead Sea Scroll Greek scripts: "This makes it clear that serifed hands are common enough (but not universal) in Judaean material assignable to the period i B.C.-i A.D." (25). DJD 8 (1990) 23f.

\4/ At this point, Roberts attempts to update his list of probably Jewish scriptural fragments dated after the rise of Christianity and surprisingly changes his mind about POxy 656, "a papyrus codex of Genesis assigned to the second century" (76) in which he finds no abbreviations of nomina sacra, but blank spaces where the tetragrammaton was expected, filled in by a later hand with uncontracted KURIOS. He does not attempt to explain how this early codex could be Jewish -- an unexpected position given his earlier arguments about presumed Jewish resistance to anything but the roll format for copies of the Law!

\5/ He also considers "most puzzling" the ambiguous fragment POxy 1007 "part of a leaf of a parchment codex of Genesis dated to the third century" in which the tetragrammaton is abbreviated in paleo-Hebrew, followed by an abbreviated form of QEOS. He suggests that "either we have an instance of a Jewish scribe being influenced by Christian practice or we must assume that a Christian in copying a Jewish manuscript preserved the Hebrew form of the Name, as a few later manuscripts, e.g. the Marchalianus, do" (77). He never considers that perhaps we have a Jewish scribe for whom the use of such contractions was part of an ongoing scribal tradition. Nor does he comment on the codex problem here as well.

\6/ I have great respect for Colin Roberts as a pioneer in papyrological and codicological matters, but he is certainly not a reliable guide for reconstructing the history of early Jewish and early Christian scribal practices. His knowledge of Judaism in 1949 appears to be entirely secondary and rapidly becoming out of date as the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls became available. By 1977, he has the benefit of Kurt Treu's criticisms and cautions, and he tries to take them into account. But the Schweich Lectures abundantly attest that Roberts still wants there to be much clearer lines between Judaism and Christianity than the evidence supports. His concessions to the new evidence often are fascinating: As we noted in his appendix, he is now willing to admit a 2nd century codex as probably Jewish (12, and n.5); tucked away in his note 2 on p. 15 he conjectures that "some of these early O.T. texts [which he considers to be Christian in origin] may have been copied from better written Jewish manuscripts in which such literary practices as the use of iota adscript would have been usual." Still, "to judge from their hands, the earliest Christian books were essentially books for use, not, as Jewish Rolls of the Law sometimes were, almost cult objects; that was only possible for a publicly recognized and protected cult so that the Christian equivalent is not found before the great codices of the fourth century" (15). His general conclusion about the early Christian manuscripts from the 2nd century is that they are largely "reformed documentary," "quasi-literary," and he points to such evidence as "that of leaving spaces between words or more often groups of words ... in contrast with the strict literary principle of scriptio continua with breaks only at the end of sections," or to writing "the first word of the text [with]... and enlarged initial letter, [and also] ... the beginning of a new clause or section" (16). Still, he somewhat belatedly adds "documentary practice may not have been the only influence on Christian scribes. In the manuscript of the Minor Prophets found in a cave near Engedi [sic] in Judaea and dated between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50, and enlarged letter, preceded by a small blank space, marks the beginning of a new phrase, while verses are marked off by larger spaces. This may well have been standard Hebrew usage in texts such as this, clearly intended for liturgical reading" (18). In a footnote, he opines that "this might indicate that the method of paragraphing by the initial letter was of Jewish origin" (n.3). He is also well aware that similar enlargement and/or extension of letters into the margin (ekthesis) "in secular literary texts ... is confined in the Roman period to commentaries and lists" (18). "Scrupulous reproduction of the text" as attested by careful correction of manuscripts "may be a legacy from Judaism" (22) -- a rather ambiguous judgment at best about the care in copying on the part of the initial scribe!

\1/ "From this survey of the externals of our earliest Christian manuscripts we can conclude that their writing is based, with some changes and with a few exceptions, on the model of the documents, not on that of Greek classical manuscripts nor on that of the Greco-Jewish tradition" (20). "But if the style is documentary in origin, it is documentary with a difference. Several of the early texts carry reading aids -- accents, breathings, punctuation, marks to indicate foreign words; ... All this is quite alien to the documents and not all that common in the literary papyri, not at least in the abundance in which they are found in some Christian texts" (21)

\7/ See also P.Parsons, DJD 8 (1990) 23f, on the Minor Prophets scroll (item 13 above): "...the use of enlarged initials at line-beginning (hands A and B) and phrase-beginning (hand A) and (set out in the margin) to mark a new section (hand A) gives this manuscript a documentary look. ... The fact is itself remarkable. Early Christian books show the same characteristic; copies of the Greek classics do not. It has therefore been tempting to argue that the texts of the Early Church stood closer to the world of business than to that of literature, and to draw conclusions about the social milieu in which the texts circulated or the esteem in which they were held. Now we see the same thing in a Jewish manuscript of pre-Christian date. This may suggest that the Christians inherited the practice, rather than inventing it; the problem remains, why Greek-speaking Jews should have adopted it in the first place" (23f). Parsons adds, in his comparisons of the various Dead Sea Scroll Greek scripts: "This makes it clear that serifed hands are common enough (but not universal) in Judaean material assignable to the period i B.C.-i A.D." (25).

---

Summary Report to my Colleagues on the SBL Program [ca 12no2004]:

My initial plan has gone awry, and I find myself constipated with new information and possibilities. Perhaps I'll be able to sort some of it out before our session, but in the meantime, here is where things currently stand:

My previous efforts, which I've tried to summarize below, convince me that there are direct continuities between pre-Christian Jewish Greek scribal traditions and early Christian practices, both on logical grounds and in terms of the extant evidence. Originally, I planned to explore in more depth the early Christian side of this relationship, and to present it in selected images and visual comparisons that built on the previous work.

But since I've always felt uncomfortable about the generalizations based on earlier editions (and impressions) of the papyrological sources, I wanted to detour briefly to determine just how similar or different the features I was emphasizing (now called "lectional signs" by one of the online projects) were in relation to the general "literary" and "documentary" papyrological sources of the same period. I already knew that some of these features (e.g. word division by spacing) could be found in some "documentary" letters and reports, but was not sure whether earlier editors had paid close enough attention to such matters in "literary" sources.

Well, the ease of internet access to relevant (and irrelevant) images has trapped me, and I've discovered that the "Jewish" features that I'd thought most relevant and characteristic are also fairly typical of a class of materials that is being dubbed "Paraliterary" (I like the term) by a Louvain online project (see below) -- especially items in the range of things classified as "commentaries" of various sorts. This does not ruin the continuity hypothesis, but it does open interesting new doors that I've only begun to try to open. What kinds of people wrote and/or copied these "paraliterary" materials? What was their training, their social and educational status? Is the impression that the clearly Jewish manuscripts with these features are written in more "professional" lettering than most of the non-Jewish examples significant? If these features had long since become part of a Jewish and Christian "scribal tradition," does their continued presence in other contexts have any direct relevance for the continuities/discontinuities issue or the social status issue? And so on.

The presentation that I've been working on, with a quick rehash of my previous efforts and with appropriate links to the online materials is found below, followed by various related notes and lists that I've amassed for further exploration. I can probably give a very brief report containing this confession and showing some selected illustrative images rather than using the full 25 minutes (!), since others may need more time. All this is for your eyes only, until, of course, google.com and its compeditors discover it!

Bob

==

* SBL 2004 paper: Textual Transmission and Early Jewish-Christian Relations

[S22-110 (p.174)-- Monday Nov. 22, 4-6:30, CC-207]

[Papyrology & Early Christian Backgrounds is co-sponsoring, with the New
Testament Textual Criticism and Early Jewish Christian Relations Sections]
– "Eisenbaum, Pamela" <PEisenbaum@Iliff.edu> (March 04)

Eldon Jay Epp, Case Western Reserve University (Emeritus): Jews and Judaism in Oxyrhynchus: Socioreligious Context for the New Testament Papyri <eepp@erols.com>

Robert A. Kraft, University of Pennsylvania: From Jewish Scribes to Christian Scriptoria: Issues of Continuity and Discontinuity

L. W. Hurtado, University of Edinburgh: The Meta-data of Earliest Christian Manuscripts <l.hurtado@ed.ac.uk>

Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Christ against the Jews: Anti-Jewish Alterations of the Texts of Scripture <behrman@email.unc.edu>

T. Rajak, University of Reading, Respondent <t.rajak@reading.ac.uk>

"From Jewish Scribes to Christian Scriptoria?: Issues of Continuity and Discontinuity in their Greek Literary Worlds" [first attempt, oc-no2004]

Overview

Attempting to map the route(s) between Jewish and Christian scribal practices encounters many obstacles. That there were some connections is highly probable, given the Jewish origins of Christianity and the adopting of Jewish scriptures by many early Christian individuals and groups. Whether there were any unusual aspects to this process and what traces it may have left is the focus of this presentation. With respect to scribal conventions, how much did early Christian copyists and/or authors take over from the Jewish heritage, and can we learn anything useful from such findings?

Background: the "certifiably Jewish" Greek materials

An examination of the dozen or so surviving fragments of pre- and non- Christian Jewish scriptures in Greek provides an obvious starting point. These are all written in scroll format (use of codices is not attested for literature in the pre-Christian period) representing various degrees of literary training and/or care. Egypt and Palestine are the locations where these fragments have been discovered, and where they probably also originated. These fragments are dated paleographically from the second century BCE onward, on both papyrus and leather, and the question of "Jewish" or "Christian" becomes muddled as we reach the second half of the first century CE and later.

Various descriptive observations are possible concerning the scribal features of these "certifiably Jewish" fragments. Several are written in careful decorative Greek hands that, from a modern aesthetic perspective, rival what has been preserved from their contemporary Greek literary world in general. Whether this means that they were transcribed by well trained Jewish scribes in a clearly Jewish context is impossible to say, since it cannot be excluded that some or all of them may have come from the professional book copying trade of the time without any specific concern for the "Jewishness" of their producers. Some of the "Jewish" hands also are less aesthetically striking.

Regarding format issues of a larger (layout of text) and smaller ("lectional signs") sort, several of these fragments of Jewish Greek scriptures employ special markings to indicate section divisions: "paragraph" signs (Fouad 266b), interlinear marginal strokes at the left margin (4QLevA, Esther), extension of (often enlarged) letters into the left margin (ekthesis) at the start of a section or word in the otherwise all caps (uncial or majuscule) writing ( MPrsA, Esther). Within the text blocks, spacing appears in all these manuscripts (except those too fragmentary to judge) to separate sections (sentences) and even words (MPrsB), although explicit punctuation is rare. Special marks for breathings, accents, stress, etc., are also rare in the surviving fragments (dieresis in Job, mid point in Fouad 266b).

Characteristic of these early fragments is their treatment of the special "four lettered" divine name, the "tetragrammaton." An unambiguous and certifiably pre-Christian example of the tetragrammaton being represented by the Greek term "Lord" (kurios), as was regularly the case in later Christian texts, has not yet been found (but see 4Q126), although there is good reason to think that such a substitution was in use in Greek Jewish circles (e.g. Philo, Paul, Josephus). Nor do abbreviations of other kinds occur, not even of numbers in cipher form ("12" for "twelve") -- although the surviving fragments seldom record numbers in any form -- the absence of which would be consistent with what is typical of other Greek literary manuscripts from the same period.

Early Christian copying of manuscripts

All that is background, which I have explored in various forms in the past several years. My intention for this presentation was to explore more thoroughly the presence, or absence, of such features in extant early Christian (or indeterminantly "Jewish" or "Christian") manuscripts in hopes of shedding light on the extent to which early Christian scribes may have been trained in (or imitated) Jewish approaches. Presumably Jews such as Paul who embraced some form of what came to be called "Christianity" and who also maintained a positive appreciation for Jewish scriptures retained possession of their copies of Jewish scriptures (in whatever form, including excerpts) and encouraged other sympathizers to obtain copies as well. To what extent can we trace such developments in the preserved evidence?

Special treatment of the tetragrammaton is probably the most obvious traceable phenomenon in this regard. From his textually selfconscious Christian perch, Jerome tells us about the "PIPI" manuscripts as late as the start of the 5th century, and we even have a Christian Hexaplaric palimpsest fragment from the Cairo Geniza to illustrate his claim. Other examples of less clear pedigree from the Christian period have also been preserved, showing that this pre-Christian practice so well attested in the Greek Jewish fragments -- not to mention related phenomena in the Semitic Dead Sea Scrolls -- had a significant afterlife in the emerging world of Christian scriptoria. The pronunciation as IO or IAO also left its mark in the Onomastica literature as well as in "magic" type of objects. Whether, as I suspect, the development of Christian "nomina sacra" is a related phenomenon, I leave aside for the present.

My plan for this presentation was to explore possible continuities between the "certifiably Jewish" use of certain "lectional signs" (paragraph markers, section dividers, enlarged initial letters, letters extending into the left margin ["ekthesis"], various types of spacing, diacritics, line fillers, and the like) and their presence in early Christian manuscripts. I am reacting, in part, to older claims that Christian scribal practices often need to be understood as at best "sub-literary," emerging rather ad hoc among relatively untrained and impecunious copyists who sort of made things up as they went along. This, I suspect, is not a useful description of the situation, and probably few contemporary students of ancient literature would endorse that approach. What would a close examination of the evidence indicate? Can we shed some light on how early Christian copyists and producers of literature were trained and operated within the larger framework of ancient "scrollology" and "codicology" through such a study?

Important studies of early Jewish and Christian materials, in relation to the Dead Sea Scroll evidence, have been published by Emanuel Tov, with the most recent appearing just this week from Brill -- Scribal Habits and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden/Boston: E. J. Brill, 2004) xix + 398 pp. and 21 illustrations; see especially "Appendix 5: Scribal Features of Early Witnesses to Greek Scripture." Of the 15 (or 16 if both hands of the Gk MPr scroll are counted) extant "certifiably Jewish" Greek biblical and parabiblical manuscripts, two are too fragmentary to be useful for present purposes (7QLXXEx, 7QLXXEpJer; I'm not including the other controversial and highly fragmentary 7Q materials at this point, which would increase the total), while all the others show uses of space breaks! Many manuscripts of Greek Jewish scriptures from the early Christian period exhibit similar features (Yale Genesis, Baden Exodus, Beatty Num-Dt, Beatty Jer, POxy 656 Gen, POxy 4442 Exod). I have only just begun to gather the evidence from other early papyri that might be expected to preserve such "characteristic Jewish features," if indeed such features were transmitted as I suspect -- e.g. Philo, "apocrypha and pseudepigrapha," Josephus, and even Paul and other early Christian materials.

Lectional Signs in the larger Greco-Roman world

As I've noted, older scholarly handbooks had suggested that the "lectional signs" in question were unusual in extant Greek literature and thus called for a less "literary" sort of explanation. Since every year our access to ancient writing conventions expands significantly with the publication of additional papyri and related materials, it seemed wise to detour briefly (I thought) to determine how accurate the older judgments might be regarding "literary" use of such devices. Fortunately, thanks to various forward-looking projects in the study of the ancient materials, a wealth of images have become and are becoming available on internet sites to facilitate such a task. The researcher is increasingly less dependant on what earlier editors have chosen to describe or, less frequently, to exhibit in facsimile. Much can now be viewed in minimally digested form, such as the Oxyrhynchus papyri from volume 15 (POxy 1782) onward (selectively in the earlier volumes), or with detailed descriptive information as in such endeavors as the Advanced Papyrological Information System or the LEUVEN DATABASE OF ANCIENT BOOKS or the "Catalogue of Paraliterary Papyri" and the "LISTS AND CATALOGUES IN GREEK PARALITERARY PAPYRI" also being produced at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Also very useful for "literary" texts are the online Mertens-Pack 3 listings.

Sometimes things don't work out as expected. Rather than confirming that the early Jewish and early Christian scribal practices were relatively unusual in relation to the broader Greco-Roman world and thus strengthened the arguments for characteristic continuity in this aspect, study of the wider context suggests that the early Jewish and early Christian scribes may have been following well-worn procedures used in the production of commentarial and related material from pre-Christian times onward! This was a surprise, not necessarily unpleasant, but I have only begun to reflect on what it might mean for understanding what was going on in the scribal traditions of early Judaism and early Christianity.

Fortunately, there is a growing interest, and thus some bibliography on the subject, among students of Greco-Roman antiquity. This is not surprising when one notices that in the approximately 1100 online items from Oxyrhynchus (including both "literary" and "documentary" materials) that are dated prior to 200 CE, about 5% (54 items) are classified as some form of "commentary" by their various editors. Although perhaps 20 % of these are too small or too mutilated to provide useful evidence, the vast majority of the rest contain one or more of the lectional signs that seem to be typical of the early Jewish materials. Indeed, I found only one item that was extensively preserved but had none of the lectional signs. Similarly, in the Leuven Corpus of Paraliterary Papyri which presently contains 228 "mythographic" items dated prior to about the year 200 of which 53 are classified as "commentary," nearly half are described as employing coronis (5) or paragraphos (23) markers, and many make use of blank spacing (19) and/or ekthesis (13) as well as "abbreviation" (11). A similar pattern exists through the larger CPP collection as well (228 items, coronis 15, paragraphos 77, blank spacing 72, ekthesis 30 -- and numeric abbreviations 32, with other abbreviations as well at 36).

What does this suggest for the topic at hand? It does not change the fact that early Jewish and early Christian manuscripts share certain features, but it does dilute any argument that such features were unusual in manuscripts from that period. In certain types of writings, most noticably "commentary," one might even expect to find most of these features. We might well ask what types of writing were not affected by these lectional signs, in order to proceed to more responsible conclusions. Does the contemporary classification "Paraliterary" help to characterize these approaches, and if so, what does it tell us? I have no answers yet, but will close with a few relevant images for comparison and contemplation:

POxy1173+1356+2158++ Philo (3rd ce, papyrus codex) [vh696]
[neat semi-cursive hand, use of spacing]

POxy 23.2369 Sophocles, Inachus [tragedy] roll, turn of era, ed. E. Lobel
marginal markings, section spacing, diacritics, abbreviated marginal number [average]

POxy 24.2387 Alcman, Parthenia [poetry, commentary] roll, turn of era, ed. E. Lobel
marginal markings, interlinear marks, diacritics and punct, spacing at end of lines, commentary abbrevs and some word/sentence spacing? [neat]

POxy 53.3695 Anacreon [Lyric poetry] roll, 1st CE, ed. M. W. Haslam --
interlinear marginal strokes, ornate coronis, diacritics (added later?) [average]

[paragraphos, abbrev strokes too]

P.Oxy.XXIV 2389 Commentary (on Alcman) roll ed. E. Lobel [paragr, mg strokes]
Second half of first century [neat simple uncial]

 

POxy 44.3208 "Latin Letter" [doc], turn of era, ed. V. Brown
clear word spacing, punctuation marks [somewhat careless]

Reign of Augustus

 

POxy 53.3711 Commentary (on Lyric Poetry) roll [X type "chrisms" paragr, minor spacing?]
Second century

 

Sorbonne 826 cahier d'e'colier grec d'Egypte ; P. Bour. 1 ; Pack2 2643, 3/4 CE

upright chrism

==

Some Bibliography

William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus ( Studies in Book and Print Culture; University of Toronto Press 2003). x / 440 pp / 18 illustrations, 63 tables ISBN 0802037348 Cloth $85.00 = 55.00
http://classics.uc.edu/johnson <william.johnson@UC.EDU>
The text is in large part technical, and directed in the first instance to papyrologists and students of Buchwesen. But I'll mention that I convinced UT to include a largish number of fairly lavish plates, including 3 color foldouts and 4 double page spreads, in the hope of providing a relatively affordable tool for showing e.g. undergraduates the look and feel of a literary roll (as only a foldout can properly do!); thus a reasonable recommendation for purchase even at a teaching institution.

Glenn W. Most (ed.), Commentaries - Kommentare. Aporemata: Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte, Band 4. Go"ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999. Pp. xvi, 468. ISBN 3-525-25903-4. DM 142. [Reviewed by James J. O'Donnell] In organizing by object rather than subject of commentary, it misses some horizontal links. Ineke Sluiter's 'Commentaries and the Didactic Tradition' ranges most widely and suggestively, but few of the other papers succeed in isolating commentary-making as a practice in itself. Second, there is little attention to the material form of the thing called 'commentary', and this is unfortunate. The term is used, in my experience, for a range of things including but not limited to: transcription (with or without editing) of oral presentation of exposition of a text read aloud to a broad public (many Christian sermons take this form, but many books passed down as commentaries began as such sermons with greater [Ambrose] and lesser [Augustine, some of the time] degrees of revision afterwards); marginal notes and interlineations in an authoritative text (with important transformation that occurs when the marginalia of an authoritative commentator are extracted and made the center of a book and the text reduced to lemmata -- Pelagius on Paul went through an important shift of this sort); compilations of marginalia (e.g., the Glossa Ordinaria or the Talmud); and deliberate writing of a "commentary" as a vehicle for the exposition of the commentator's own views (from Hellenistic readers of Plato and Aristotle down to Aquinas down to the present -- with the particular further distinction in our own time between the ambitious learned commentary, the humble commentary-for-students, and [very commonly practiced by classicists] the ambitious learned commentary headed by a recusatio purporting that the subjoined work is only a humble commentary-for-students [these last not infrequently published with handsome two-toned covers]). To continue to lump those practices together as often as this volume does is to leave a task of distinction for a future conference.

 

Silke Trojahn, Die auf Papyri erhaltenen Kommentare zur Alten Komo"die. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der antiken Philologie. BzA 175. Mu"nchen/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2002. Pp. 264. ISBN 3-598-77724-8. EUR 78.00. [Review by Mieczyslaw Mejor] Altogether, the book discusses in detail 22 papyri (including two fragments of a comedy of unknown authorship) with fragments of commentaries to Aristophanes' comedies and three papyri with commentaries to Eupolis' comedies: Aristophanes: P. Oxy. VI 856; P. Bodl. Gr. Class. F 72; P. Oxy. XI 1402; P. Berol. 13929 and P. Berol. 21105; P. Bingen 18; P. Oxy. XI 1371; P. Rein. 3, 20 = P. Vindob. 29423; P. Strass. 621; P. Oxy. LXVI 4509; P. Rein. 1, 34 d; P. Duk. 643; PSI 720; P. Oxy. LXVI 4514; P. Louvre (= Pack 140); P. Oxy. XIII 1617; P. Oxy. LXVI 4520; P. Oxy. LXVI 4521; P. Oxy. XXXV 2737; P. Michig. 3690; P. Flor. 112; P. Amh. 2, 13; Eupolis: P. Oxy. XXXV 2741; P. Oxy. XXXVII 2813; P. Oxy. XXXV 2740. The author decided to leave out the fragments that, according to her, do not shed new light on the subject. However, in a supplement to the second part of the book (cap. 2.2.6), they have been enumerated and discussed briefly: They include the following: P. Oxy. ined. Inv. 101/175 (The author is preparing their edition in Oxyrhynchus Papyri), P. Oxy. XXXV 2742, P. Oxy. XXXVII 2806, P. Ryl. 483, P. Grenf. 2, 12, P. Rein. 3, 23 (= P. Vind. 29413), PSI 846, P. Oxy. XXXVII 2810, P. Oxy. XXXV 2738, P. Oxy. XVII 2086r, P. Oxy. XXXVII 2811v, P. Antin. 2, 60r, P. Oxy. XIII 1611, P. Oxy. LXVI 4508). According to the adopted classification, commentaries preserved on papyrus are classified by their format into scholia (i.e. notes written near a column of text on a roll or in the margins of a codex) and hypomnemata (i.e. commentaries written separately from the main text, either with or without the inclusion of lemmata to key them to the appropriate lines of the commented text) -- It is worth mentioning that the author refers here to the authority of E.G. Turner, declaring that Turner himself introduced this terminological differentiation (cf. p. 10, n. 2: "Fuer diese terminologische Trennung plaedierte bereits TURNER ..."), and forgetting that he used the results of studies of Edgar Lobel (see: P.Oxy. XX 2260; P.Oxy. XXI 2307, p. 95; P.Oxy. XXV 2429, p. 35, see: Turner Greek Papyri, pp. 114-115).

Le Commentaire entre tradition et innovation. Actes du Colloque international de l'Institut des Traditions Textuelles (Paris Villejuif, 22-25 sept. 1999). Publ. sous dir. M.-O. Goulet-Caze', avec coll. e'dit. de T. Dorandi, R. Goulet [et al.], Paris 2000,

Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter, hrsg. von W. Geerlings, Chr. Schulze, Leiden/Ko"ln 2002 (Clavis commentariorum antiquitatis et medii aevi),The classical commentary. Histories, practices, theory. Ed. by R. K. Gibson, Chr. Shuttleworth Kraus, Leiden/Ko"ln 2002. [Review by Mieczyslaw Mejor]

Perhaps, to avoid the possibility of misunderstandings due to poorly defined terminology, given such diversity of the forms of text commentaries, one should rather talk of "commenting literature" instead of "commentaries", which encompasses all the forms of explications and commentary: scholia, hypomnemata, hypotheseis, Christian ennarrationes (commentarius currens), sermons, accessus ad auctores and proper commentaries, i.e. works of determined structure, with a characteristic prologue, an introduction to the methodology of studying-commenting and the subject-matter of the commented text (isagoge).
The article by Wolfgang Luppe, "Scholia, hypomnemata, und hypotheseis zu griechischen Dramen auf Papyri", brings forth a number of interesting remarks on different forms of ancient commentaries on Attic comedy and tragedy. In most cases our knowledge of the form of the commentaries is distorted by many centuries of manuscript tradition, but thanks to the papyri we are able to get a glimpse of the technique and contents of the original commentaries. Luppe confirms that the scholia (like the hypomnemata) we find in the papyri, as a rule, are not the notes by the readers but explanations taken from other commentaries. This is why the scholia of the Antiquity are something else then the ones from the Middle Ages, and their authors should not be equated with the medieval "scholiastae". The hypotheseis, i.e. short summaries of plays, presenting the main characters and mythological stories, were a specific form of commentary. Thus, they are not what the modern reader would call didascalia. These notes are present in the medieval manuscript tradition (Euripides), and on papyri. They come from the same source, which -- according to Luppe -- was the work of Diakaiarchus, a disciple of Aristotle. S. Trojahn's book on papyri commentaries on Old Attic Comedy is in full harmony with Luppe's article.

[Review by Daniel Sto"kl Ben Ezra] Wolfgang Luppe, "scholia, hupomne^mata und hupotheseis zu griechischen Dramen auf Papyri" (55-68, illustrations pp. 69-77) is a nicely illustrated overview of the material remains of the three main kinds of commentaries, Scholia (54-57), Hypomnemata (57-64) and Hypotheseis (64-68), focusing on Greek plays: Scholia: Ven. Marc. 474; POxy 2806, PDuke Inv 643; Hypomnemata: POxy 2812; POxy 2813; POxy 2741; Hypotheseis: POxy 4020; POxy 2455; POxy 2456.

Marina Del Fabbro, Il commentario nella tradizione papiracea, "Studia Papyrologica" 18 (1979), pp. 69-132.

the thesis of G. Zuntz that papyri and medieval corpora of scholia were based on the same sources, the Alexandrian commentaries

Heinrich von Staden on the Hellenistic commentaries to Hippokrates in Geerlings, Wilhelm and Christian Schulze (edd.), Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter, Bd. 2. Neue Beitra"ge zu seiner Eforschung. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. 272; illustr. 40. ISBN 90-04-13562-6.

Tiziano Dorandi, Le commentaire dans la tradition papyrologique: quelques cas controverse's, [in:] Le commentaire entre tradition ... , op. cit., pp. 15-27.

Wolfgang Luppe, "Scholia, hypomnemata und hypotheseis zu griechischen Dramen auf Papyri," published in Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter, op. cit., pp. 55-77.

==

Testing hypotheses

check Africanus KESTOI frg (POxy 412 = vh674 = LitLond 174; CHR GkLitHands pl 23a), and other early literary examples on the edges of Christianity and Judaism.

 

photographicservices@cbl.ie wrote to them re ChBeat 7, 7 May (response received)

http://www.papyrologie.paris4.sorbonne.fr/menu1/collections/pgrec/mp3.htm

http://www.ulg.ac.be/facphl/services/cedopal/ (Liege)

beaubien@umich.edu

==

PAPYRI: POxy Listing by "Dates" to about 200 CE:

POxy 53.3716 Euripides, Orestes [tragedy] roll, ca 100 BCE, ed. M. W. Haslam --
marginal number abbreviation "K" (perhaps added later?) with horizontal stroke(s)
[careless] Second-first century BCE
POxy 65.4451 "Commentary on Iliad I" roll, 1st BCE, ed. M. W. Haslam --
word/sentence spacing with enlarged first letters inline [sloppy]

First century BCE

P.Oxy.XLIX 3462 account [lots of spacing]
First century BCE

P.Oxy.XLIX 3482
8 October 73 BCE

P.Oxy.LV 3777 cession of land
1-31 August 57 BCE
P.Oxy.XLIX 3461
25 August 46 BCE
P.Oxy.LIII 3714 Euripides (both sides?)
First century BCE or CE
P.Oxy.XLIX 3433 Menander [irregular rt mg]
Late first century BCE/first century CE
POxy 42.3000 Eratosthenes, Hermes [Epic poetry] roll, turn of the era, ed. P. J. Parsons --s
parts of two cols from end of the work? coronis? abbreviations? [sloppy]

First century BCE - first century CE
POxy 44.3208 "Latin Letter" [doc], turn of era, ed. V. Brown
clear word spacing, punctuation marks [somewhat careless]

Reign of Augustus
POxy 68.4660 Hesiod, Days [poetry] roll, turn of era, ed. D. Obbink
probable marginal mark (simple paragraphos)

First century BCE/first century CE
POxy 61.4099 "Mythological Compendium" roll, turn of the era, ed. R. L. Fowler --
no left margin; uses spacing between some words and at end of lines [careless uncial]

First century BCE-First century CE
P.Oxy.LXVII 3324 Meleager [irregular rt mg]
First century BCE/first century CE
P.Oxy.LXVII 4546 Euripides [badly damaged]
First century BCE/first century CE
P.Oxy.LX 4013 Euripides [very small frg]
First century BCE/first century CE
P.Oxy.XLI 2979 letter [minimal spacing]
September/October 3 BCE

POxy 23.2369 Sophocles, Inachus [tragedy] roll, turn of era, ed. E. Lobel
marginal markings, section spacing, diacritics, abbreviated marginal number [average]

First BCE/ first CE
POxy 24.2387 Alcman, Parthenia [poetry, commentary] roll, turn of era, ed. E. Lobel
marginal markings, interlinear marks, diacritics and punct, spacing at end of lines, commentary abbrevs and some word/sentence spacing? [neat]

Late first BCE/ early first CE
P.Oxy.XXII 2309 Homer [end of line abbrev?]
First century BCE/ first century
POxy 19.2214 Callimachus, Aitia [poetry] roll, turn of era, ed. E. Lobel

seems to have some diacritics and some comments (top margin, etc.) [average]
First century BCE/ first century CE
P.Oxy.XXXI 2545 Aristophanes [end of line punct?]
Late first century BCE / early first century CE
POxy 25.2432 "Simonides ?" [poetry] roll, turn of era, ed. E. Lobel

(no left mg) diacritics, end of line spaces and punctuation [attractive]

First century BCE / first century CE
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2662 Plato [no mgs]
First century BCE/ first century CE
POxy 20.2277 "Official Correspondence" one side, 13 CE, ed. E. P. Wegener

some word/sentence division, especially by use of large letters [sloppy]
POxy 55.3779 "Registration of Sheep and Goats" one side, 20/21 CE, ed. J. R. Rea
some word/sentence division, especially by use of large letters (? hard to read)
P.Oxy.XXVI 2439 Pindar
First half of the first century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2360 Stesichorus
Early first century
POxy 42.3020 "Letter of Augustus and Proceedings of Embassy" two cols of roll, early 1st CE, ed. P. J. Parsons
some interesting features, fairly subtle (ekthesis? small spaces?)[undisciplined]
P.Oxy.XIX 2222 chronology
Early first century
POxy 38.2825 Menander, Phasma [comedy] roll, early 1st CE, ed. E. G. Turner
some divisions by spacing, interlinear marginal strokes [attractive]
POxy 25.2435 "Acta Alexandrinorum ?" [prose] roll, early 1st CE, ed. E. G. Turner

various divisions (large and small) by spacing, enlarged letters [sloppy]
P.Oxy.XLIX 3483 contract
Early first century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2772
CE 11, 28 April (?), see Anag. 3 (1983), 22-23
P.Oxy.LV 3806
21 May 15 CE
P.Oxy.LXVII 4582
14-27 September 16 CE
P.Oxy.LV 3778
28 January 21 CE
POxy 17.2148 "Letter to Heraclides" [doc] sheet, 27 CE, ed. A. S. Hunt
clear tendencies to word division by spacing [sloppy]
POxy 55.3807 "Business Letter" [doc] sheet, 26-28 CE, ed. J. R. Rea

tend to word division by spacing, much abbreviation
POxy 24.2412 "Account of Money Payments" [doc, in cols] roll, 28/29 CE, ed. J. W. B. Barns

clear and consistent word division by spacing [mixed hands]
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2842
CE 29? CE
P.Oxy.XLIX 3484
27-33 CE

P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2850
26 Jan., CE 29
P.Oxy.LVIII 3915
7-8 September 30 CE

P.Oxy.XIX 2234
CE 31

P.Oxy.XXII 2353
4th September CE 32
P.Oxy.LXVII 4588
26 September 33 CE
P.Oxy.XLVII 3351
20 February 34 CE

P.Oxy.XLVI 3267
c. 37-41 CE

P.Oxy.XLIX 3485
23 August 38 CE
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2834
19 July 42 CE
P.Oxy.LXVII 4583
15 September 45 CE

P.Oxy.LV 3780
40-42 CE
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2720
CE 41/54
P.Oxy.XLIX 3486
41-42? CE
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2669
CE 41/54
P.Oxy.XLII 3033
c. 45 - 47 CE
P.Oxy.L 3522 Job (OG) [[see above]]
First century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4624 business letter [word spacing, marginal interlinear marks?]
First century
P.Oxy.XV 1795 Epigrams [sectioning by ekthesis, blank ends]
First century
P.Oxy.XXX 2508 Archilochus ? [diacritics?]
First century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2632 Lyric Poetry
First century
P.Oxy.XIX 2221 Commentary on Nicander [ekthesis, section spacing]
First century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2375 Callimachus
First century
P.Oxy.XIX 2220 Euphorion [ekthesis? diacritics, corrections/comments in mg]
First century
P.Oxy.LX 4015 Euripides
First century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2391 Commentary (on Alcman?) ed. E. Lobel [spacing; informal uncial]
First century [very fragmentary]
P.Oxy.XLII 3021 Acta Alexandrinorum
First century
P.Oxy.LVII 3896 Thucydides
First century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2397 Commentary on Iliad roll [nothing unusual][same scribe as 2389?]
Second half of first century
POxy 45.3230 Hesiod, Erga and Aspis [Epic poetry] roll, 2nd CE, ed. M. L. West --
spacing? (nothing obvious)(excerpts) [attractive]

First century
P.Oxy.LX 4025 Menander, Misoumenos?
First century
P.Oxy.XV 1789 Alcaeus [interlinear marginal strokes, diacritics]
First century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4440 list [word division]
First century
P.Oxy.XXI 2295 Alcaeus [paragraphos & mg strokes, diacritics, corrections, comments?]
First century
P.Oxy.XV 1791 Pindar
First Century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2618 Stesichorus? [paragraphos?]
First century
P.Oxy.LX 4048 Aeschines [section divider?]
First century
POxy 65.4453 "Commentary on the Odyssey" roll, 1st CE, ed. M. W. Haslam --
interlinear marginal stroke, possibly some spacing?

First century
P.Oxy.LIX 3966 Menander
First century
P.Oxy.L 3540 Comedy
First century
P.Oxy.XXI 2303 Alcaeus [mg strokes, diacritics, comments?]
First century ?
P.Oxy.XXI 2298 Alcaeus [diacritics (no left mg)]
First century ?
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2502 Hesiod? (scrap)
First century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3468 petition [ekthesis, spacing (neat writing)]
First century
P.Oxy.XLII 3014 decree [some spacing (sloppy hand)]
First century
P.Oxy.XV 1801 Theon? Glossary [sectioning by ekthesis & horiz strokes, use of spacing]
First Century
P.Oxy.LIII 3700 Mime Poetry [sectioned by spacing (no left mg)]
First century
P.Oxy.XLII 3062 letter [word division]
First century
P.Oxy.XLII 3052 itinerary [abbrev number]
First century
P.Oxy.XLVI 3273 official correspondence [some word spacing]
First century
POxy 53.3701 "Materia Medica" roll, 1st CE, ed. M. W. Haslam --
two columns, not "literary"; interlinear marginal strokes and sectioning by spacing
[ligatured, careless; Technical writing? interlinear marginal strokes]
First century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4655 Hesiod [diacritics added]
First century
P.Oxy.XXII 2339 proceedings & Acta? [word division spacing (long lines)(both sides)]
First century
POxy 53.3695 Anacreon [Lyric poetry] roll, 1st CE, ed. M. W. Haslam --
interlinear marginal strokes, ornate coronis, diacritics (added later?) [average]

[paragraphos, abbrev strokes too]
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2786
First century
P.Oxy.LVI 3844
First century
P.Oxy.XXXIX 2880
First Century
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2835
Middle of first century
P.Oxy.XLII 3070
First century
P.Oxy.LVII 3883
First century
POxy 56.3823 On Alexander [prose] roll, 1st CE, ed. A. Kerkhecker --
interlinear marginal stroke, some internal spacing (line 9) [average]

First century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2496
First century
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2654
First century
P.Oxy.XLII 3004
First century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2812
First century
POxy 62.4324 Demosthenes [rhetoric] roll, 1st CE, ed. J. E. G. Whitehorne
possible minor word spacing, possible coronis [attractive unprofessional]

First century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3469
First century
P.Oxy.XLV 3210 Commentary on Alcman? (Addendum to XXIV 2389?) ed. M. W. Haslam
First century [very fragmentary; neat hand]
P.Oxy.XLII 3061
First century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2808
Middle of first century
P.Oxy.XXI 2299
Middle of first century ?
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2811 Commentary (on Iambic Poetry or Comedy) roll [spacing]
First half of second century
POxy 66.4502 "Epigram (Nicarchus II)" roll, 1st CE ?, ed. P. J. Parsons
section spacing with titles, some tendency to word spacing (irregular hand)

First century?
P.Oxy.LXVI 4501
First century?
P.Oxy.XXXII 2617
First century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4566
First century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2622
First century
POxy 45.3218 "New Comedy" roll, 1st CE, ed. S. Stephens --
part of one column, no side margins; overlined gamma in line 4 [careless]

First century
POxy 60.4024 Menander, Leukadia? [comedy] roll, 1st CE, ed. P. J. Parsons --
interlinear marginal strokes

First century
POxy 45.3232 Hesiod, Aspis [Epic Poetry] roll, 1st CE, ed. M. L. West --
on left margin of a single column with non-literary hand, spacing?,
possible exthesis (top line) [ligatured]

First century
P.Oxy.XLVI 3271
47-54 CE

P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2836
10-11 July CE 50
P.Oxy.XXXI 2582
31 January CE 51 (BL IX, p.196)
P.Oxy.XLVII 3332
24 June (?) 53 CE
P.Oxy.XLIV 3196
After 12 January 58 CE

P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2837
25 July-28 Aug., CE 50
P.Oxy.XXXI 2555
After 13 October 54 CE (see D. Baccani, Horoscopi greci, p.82)
P.Oxy.XLIX 3464
c. 54-60 CE
P.Oxy.XLIX 3463
Between 10 January and 29 August 58 CE
P.Oxy.LVIII 3916
16 February -28 August 60 CE

P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2851
24 July, CE 60
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2838
4 Feb., CE 62
P.Oxy.XLI 2970
13 October CE 62
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2873
25 Oct., CE 62
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2839
2 Sept., CE 64
P.Oxy.XLIX 3487
1 October 65
P.Oxy.XLI 2971
11 March CE 66

P.Oxy.XLVI 3272
61-62 CE
P.Oxy.XLV 3250
c.63 CE
P.Oxy.XLIX 3465
63-64 CE
P.Oxy.XLVII 3352
26 February-26 March 68 CE
P.Oxy.XXII 2349
CE 70
P.Oxy.XLIX 3488
70 CE
P.Oxy.LXVI 4526
December 69/January 70(?) CE

P.Oxy.XLIX 3508
16 April 70 CE
P.Oxy.XLIV 3163
16 July 71 CE
P.Oxy.XLI 2972
30 August CE 72 (?)
P.Oxy.XLIV 3164
4 September 73 CE
P.Oxy.LXV 4478
15 December 74 CE
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2840
3 Aug., CE 75
P.Oxy.LXVII 3356
28 January 76 CE
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2725
CE 71
P.Oxy.XLIX 3489
72 CE
P.Oxy.XXIV 2389 Commentary (on Alcman) roll ed. E. Lobel [paragr, mg strokes]
Second half of first century [neat simple uncial]
P.Oxy.XXXV 2740 (Addendum, pp.102-107)Commentary (on Comedy) [paragr, mg strokes]
End of first century
P.Oxy.XXII 2337
Late first century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2450
First or early second century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2451 Commentary (on Pindar) roll [paragr, mg strokes, minor spacing, cursive]
First or early second century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2818
End of first century
P.Oxy.XXIX 2506 Commentary (on Lyric Poetry) roll [polished hand, minor spacing]
First/ second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2535 Commentary (on Elegiac Epigrams)roll [badly damaged]
Late first century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2190
Late first century
P.Oxy.XLVII 3357
Late first century
P.Oxy.LX 4036
Late first century
P.Oxy.LXV 4468
Late first century
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2845
Second half of first century
P.Oxy.XV 1806
Late first century
P.Oxy.LIV 3724
Later first century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3503
Late first century
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2846
Second half of first century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3154
First century
P.Oxy.XV 1793
Late first century
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2844
Second half of first century
P.Oxy.L 3554
Second half of first century
P.Oxy.XLV 3217
Late first century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2534
End of first century

P.Oxy.XXXVI 2756
CE 78/9
P.Oxy.XLI 2987
c. CE 78/9
P.Oxy.XLIX 3510
79-80 CE
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2757
Post CE 79
P.Oxy.XLV 3264
80-1 CE

P.Oxy.XXXVI 2773
15 November, CE 82
P.Oxy.LXVI 4532
27 January 85
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2841
21 July, CE 85
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2843
24-28 Aug., CE 86
P.Oxy.XLII 3051
1 May 89 CE
P.Oxy.XLV 3240
c. 88-9 CE
P.Oxy.XLIX 3466
81-96 CE
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2856
CE 91/2
P.Oxy.XLVII 3334
ca. 89-94 CE
P.Oxy.XLI 2957
February CE 91
P.Oxy.XVIII 2185
CE 92

P.Oxy.XLVII 3333
1 February 92 CE

P.Oxy.LXII 4334
94/5 CE
P.Oxy.XLII 3022
10 October - 9 December 98 CE
P.Oxy.XLIX 3467
2 September 98 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3907
11 November 99 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3902
11 November 99 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3908
14 November 99 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3904
14 November 99 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3903
14 November 99 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3909
14 November 99 CE
P.Oxy.XLI 2959
21-27 November CE 99 (cf. M. A. So"llner, ZPE 94, 1992, 118)
P.Oxy.XLI 2958
2 December CE 99

P.Oxy.XLVII 3335
99-100 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3905
99 CE
POxy 60.4039 Aeschines, In Ctesiphontem [rhetoric] roll, ca 100 CE, ed. Eleonora Bassi --
interlinear marginal strokes

Late first or early second century
POxy 47.3325 Moschus [poetry], roll, ca 100 CE, ed. M. E. Weinstein
possibly some diacritical marks (or added later) [average]

First/second century

POxy 47.3318 [not online 05no2004]
tag, against grain, theta number

First or second century CE

P.Oxy.XLV 3234
First - second century
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2660 (and 2660a)
(2660)First/second century;(2660a)third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4443
Late first or early second century
P.Oxy.LXI 4103
First-second century
P.Oxy.XIII 1619
Late first/ early second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4314
First/second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2640
First to second centuries
POxy 57.3880 Thucydides roll, ca 100 CE, ed. M. W. Haslam --
use of spacing between some words (sentence breaks?), enlarged next letters in line
[hurried but nice] First-second century

Second century
P.Oxy.XV 1799
Second century
P.Oxy.XLVI 3313
Second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2090
Second century
P.Oxy.L 3589
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2517
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3439
Second century
P.Oxy.LXI 4107
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4550 (more of P.Harris I 38 + P.Fitzw. Mus. Add. 109)
Second century
P.Oxy.XXII 2335
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2814
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2543
Second century
P.Oxy.XLVII 3317
Second century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2489
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2536 Commentary (on Pindar) roll [limited left mg, spacing, superscription]
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4657
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2861
Second century
P.Oxy.XLII 3080
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3648
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXV 2735
Second century
P.Oxy.LIX 3963
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3668
Second century
P.Oxy.XLI 2976
Second Century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4411
Second century
P.Oxy.XLII 3059
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2593
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2635
Not later than CE 200
P.Oxy.XXXI 2550
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXV 2739
Second century
P.Oxy.L 3550
Second century
P.Oxy.LIX 3989
Second century
P.Oxy.XLI 2980
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4574
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2686
Second century
P.Oxy.LIII 3704
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3505
Second century?
P.Oxy.XLII 3010
Second century
P.Oxy.LIV 3723
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2658
Second century
P.Oxy.LIX 3992
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2161
Second century
P.Oxy.LX 4042
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVII 3320
Second century
P.Oxy.L 3543
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIX 2884
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3211
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3676
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2781
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3669
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2809
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVI 4506
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2367 Commentary (on Bacchylides) roll [spacing? abbrevs? (no left mg)]
Second century ?
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2679
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2791
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2507
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2631
Mid second century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4416
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2246
Second century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2483
Second century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2481
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3842
Second century
P.Oxy.LXV 4452 Commentary (on Iliad) roll [mg strokes]
Second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4330
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2248
Second century
P.Oxy.XLII 3003
Second century
P.Oxy.XXI 2294 Commentary (on Sappho) roll [no left mg, abbrevs?]
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2726
Second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4321
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3850
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3680
Second century
P.Oxy.XLI 2988
Second century ?
P.Oxy.XLIV 3157
Second century
P.Oxy.LVII 3893
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3213
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVI 4508 Commentary (on comedy)?; Treatise?; Literary Criticism? [fragmentary]
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2625
Second century
P.Oxy.II 0228
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3206
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3845
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2162
Second century
P.Oxy.LIII 3699
Second century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4410
Second century
P.Oxy.LIII 3712
Second century
P.Oxy.LX 4022
Second century
P.Oxy.XXII 2317
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2406
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2533
Second century
P.Oxy.LX 4014
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3653
Second century
P.Oxy.LXI 4114
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3851
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3442
Second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2094
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3675
Second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2095
Second century
P.Oxy.XLI 2945
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3441
Second century
P.Oxy.L 3532
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2651
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2179
Second century
P.Oxy.LIII 3721
Second century
P.Oxy.XXV 2431
Second century
P.Oxy.LX 4017
Second century
P.Oxy.XXI 2292 Commentary (on Sappho) roll [small frg]
Second century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4430
Second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4322
Second century
P.Oxy.XLII 3060
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2677
Second century
P.Oxy.XLII 3023
Second century
P.Oxy.L 3545
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2823
Second century
P.Oxy.XIX 2224
Second century
P.Oxy.XLII 3001
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2659
Second century
P.Oxy.XLVIII 3376
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2752
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2372
Mid-second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2171
Second century
P.Oxy.LIX 3964
Second century
P.Oxy.XXV 2426
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3215
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3220
Second century
P.Oxy.LI 3643
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2253
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2520
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2521
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3830
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2636 Commentary (on Choral Lyric) [ekthesis, spacing]
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3219
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2404
Second century
P.Oxy.LVII 3884
Second century
P.Oxy.XIX 2223
Second century
P.Oxy.LIV 3722 Commentary on Anacreon roll ed. H. Maehler [paragraphos, spacing]
Second century [quick clear writing, slanted to right; many pieces]
P.Oxy.XXII 2324
Second century
P.Oxy.L 3533
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3841
Second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4328
Second century
P.Oxy.L 3523
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2358
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3209
Second century
P.Oxy.XXV 2428
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4557
Second century
P.Oxy.XLVII 3328
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3692
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2516
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2827, reedited as LXVI 4523
Second century
P.Oxy.LX 4028
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2251
Second century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2441
Mid second century
P.Oxy.XIX 2225
Middle of second century
P.Oxy.LXI 4106
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2583
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4565
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3445
Second century
P.Oxy.LVII 3876
Second century
P.Oxy.XV 1796
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3435
Second century
P.Oxy.LIII 3698
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2821
Middle of second century
P.Oxy.LII 3657
Second century
P.Oxy.XV 1822
Second century
P.Oxy.LXV 4462
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2518
Second century
P.Oxy.XXII 2327
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3827
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2354
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2817
Middle of second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3214
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4663
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3225
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2860
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2787
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2549
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2649
Second century
P.Oxy.LXV 4472
Second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3454
Second century
P.Oxy.XLII 3078
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2250
Second century
P.Oxy.XLVI 3312
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3677
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2530
Second century?
P.Oxy.XLI 2996
Second century (?)
P.Oxy.LI 3642
Second century
POxy 60.4009 Gospel of Peter (?) codex, 2nd CE, ed. D. Luhrmann-P. J. Parsons --
inline spaces and end of line, ekthesis, abbreviated KE [average]

Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2249 Commentary (on Pindar) roll [nice hand, no left mg, word spacing]
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2178
Second century
P.Oxy.LXI 4112
Second century
P.Oxy. 4111
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2633
Mid second century
P.Oxy.LVII 3891
Second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3852
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2245
Second century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2499
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2642
Second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2088
Second century
P.Oxy.LXV 4485
Second century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4420
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2694
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2281
Second century
P.Oxy.LII 3682
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXIX 2881
Mid second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2574
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVI 4521
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2160
Second century
P.Oxy.XX 2252
Second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4307 mythographic
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3212
Second century
P.Oxy.LX 4044
Second century?
P.Oxy.XLII 3063
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2522
Second century
P.Oxy.XXII 2319
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2164
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVII 3326
Second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3223
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2176 Commentary (on Hipponax) roll [mg strokes, ekthesis]
Second century
P.Oxy.LX 4016
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVI 4516
Second century
P.Oxy.XIX 2219
Second century
P.Oxy.XXV 2433
Second Century
P.Oxy.LXV 4475
Second century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2491
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2393
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2368 Commentary (on Bacchylides?) roll [mg strokes, spacing]
Second century
P.Oxy.XXII 2330
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2559
Second century
P.Oxy.LVII 3897
Second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2172
Second century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4659
Second century
P.Oxy.XXII 2310
Second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4319
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2613
Second century
P.Oxy.LXI 4097 mythographic (image)
Second century
P.Oxy.LIX 3990
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2573
Second century
P.Oxy.LXV 4461
Second century
P.Oxy.XXI 2301
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2359
Second century
P.Oxy.LIII 3715
Second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4308 mythographic
Second century (?)
P.Oxy.LXII 4337
Second Century (c. 178?)
P.Oxy.XVIII 2180
Second century

P.Oxy.XXX 2523
Second century

P.Oxy.XL 2941
c.CE 154 (cf. P.Oxy. XL, p.117, Addendum)
P.Oxy.XLI 2963
CE 154
P.Oxy.XLI 2966
CE 154
P.Oxy.XL 2942
c.CE 154 (cf. P.Oxy. XL, p.117, Addendum)
P.Oxy.XLI 2962
?February CE 154
P.Oxy.LX 4056
154/5?
P.Oxy.LX 4057
154/5?
P.Oxy.XVII 2118
CE 156
P.Oxy.XLVII 3361
154-161
P.Oxy.XXXI 2591
CE 158/9
P.Oxy.LX 4058
158/9
P.Oxy.XLIX 3491
157-8
P.Oxy.XLIV 3198
27 December 145 - 25 January 146 or 27 December 170 - 25 January 171
P.Oxy.LX 4060
c. June-July, 161
P.Oxy.LX 4059
Between 159 and 163

P.Oxy.XLI 2974
9 September CE 162
P.Oxy.XLV 3241
11 February 163
P.Oxy.LX 4061
30 July 163
P.Oxy.XVIII 2182
19 April CE 165 (BL VIII, 254)
P.Oxy.XLII 3026
After 5 May 166
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2708
14 April CE 169 or 201, cf. BL VI p.151, VIII p.261
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2761
CE March-February 169 (see BL VIII, 262)
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2858

23 Aug., CE 171

P.Oxy.LX 4062
c. 163 CE
P.Oxy.L 3560
163/4?
P.Oxy.XLIX 3473
161-169
P.Oxy.XLIX 3492
161-9
P.Oxy.L 3561
c. January / February 165
P.Oxy.LIX 3974
165/6
P.Oxy.LIX 3975
165/6
P.Oxy.XLIV 3168
After 7 April 155 or after 4 April 178
P.Oxy.XXIV 2413
CE 168/9 (see BL VII, p.150)
P.Oxy.XLII 3027
166 -169
P.Oxy.XX 2272
Second century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2563
CE 170
P.Oxy.LXII 4336
circa 169-171
P.Oxy.LXVII 4589
168/9-174/5
P.Oxy.XXIV 2411
c. CE 173
P.Oxy.LV 3782
172-3
P.Oxy.XXI 2289
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXV 2434 Commentary on Lyric Verses (? Simonides) ed. E. Lobel roll
Late second century [mg markings; neat informal hand, sometimes ligatured]
P.Oxy.XXXV 2737 Commentary (on Comedy) roll [unusual mg strokes, spacing?]
Late second century
P.Oxy.LII 3678
Late second century
P.Oxy.XV 1788
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXI 2304
Second half of second century ?
P.Oxy.XXXIX 2888 Commentary (on Epic Poetry) roll [regular mg, few strokes, some spacing]
Second half of the second century?
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2486
Later second century
P.Oxy.XV 1794
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2357
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2482
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2445
Late second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2092
Late second century
P.Oxy.XV 1798
Late second century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3431
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXXIX 2882
Later second century
P.Oxy.XX 2262 Commentary on Callimachus roll [paragr, odd left mg, some spacing]
Second half of second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2169
Late second century
1. Edition ID: P.Oxy.L 3548 (Addenda to 2064)
Late second century
P.Oxy.LX 4047
Late second century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4650 Commentary (on Hesiod)?; anthology? roll [too fragmentary]
Second half of second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2102
Late second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2192
Late second century
P.Oxy.XX 2257 Hypothesis/Commentary of a Play (Aeschylus) ed. E. Lobel roll
Later second century ? [some spacing, abbrev ##?]
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2683 (Incorporated in P.Oxy. LXIV 4405)
Later second century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3156
Second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2509
Middle or late second century
P.Oxy.XXII 2326
Late second century
P.Oxy. 4051
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2443
Late second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2112
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2447
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2440
Late second century
P.Oxy.LIX 3972
Mid-/late second century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2698
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2388
Second half of second century
P.Oxy.LII 3671
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2692
Later first century
P.Oxy.XV 1808
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXI 2297
Late second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2082
Late second century
P.Oxy.XLVI 3285
Second half of second century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2390 Commentary (on Alcman) roll [paragr, mg strokes, spacing]
Second half of second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3239
Later second century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2804
Later second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2181
Later second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4329
Late second century

P.Oxy.XXIII 2374
Later second century
P.Oxy.XX 2264
Late second century
P.Oxy.XV 1805
Late second century
P.Oxy.LVI 3829
Later second century?
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2802
Later second century
P.Oxy.XXV 2429 Commentary (on Epicharmus) roll [mg strokes, spacing]
Late second century
P.Oxy.XIII 1604
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2663
Later second century
POxy 64.4404 GMt codex, 2nd CE (late), ed. J. David Thomas
spacing ?? only one side is imaged, very abraded!

Late second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2096
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXX 2512
Second half of the second century
P.Oxy.LII 3683
Later second century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2750
Later second century
P.Oxy.LXII 4312
Later second century
P.Oxy.XLV 3229
Second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2364
Late second century ?
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4662
Late second century
P.Oxy.XLVII 3362
Second half of second century
P.Oxy.LII 3666
Later second century
P.Oxy.XVII 2075
Late second century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2173
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2356
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2696
Later second century
P.Oxy.LX 4030
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2695
Late second century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2409
Late second century
P.Oxy.XLVII 3360
Late second or early third century

P.Oxy.LXIV 4436
c.207/8 or 175/6?

P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2871
CE 175/6

P.Oxy.XLIX 3493
23 February 175
P.Oxy.XLIX 3494
23 February 175
P.Oxy.XXXVIII 2870
10 Jan., CE 176
P.Oxy.LXV 4479
29 January 179
P.Oxy.LXV 4481
11-26 March 179

P.Oxy.L 3562
178/9
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2760
c. CE 179/80
P.Oxy.LXVII 4587
179 CE
P.Oxy.LXII 4338
182/3 CE
P.Oxy.LXV 4482
February 182 CE

P.Oxy.LX 4063
October/November 183

P.Oxy.XVIII 2183
27 December CE 181
P.Oxy.LX 4064
15 December 183
P.Oxy.LX 4065
22 December 183
P.Oxy.LX 4066
24 December 183
P.Oxy.LX 4067
16 January 184

P.Oxy.LXVI 4527
After 28 August 185
P.Oxy.XLV 3242
185-7
P.Oxy.XLIV 3166
29 August - 27 September 187
P.Oxy.LVIII 3919
After 28 August 188
P.Oxy.LVIII 3918
188/9
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2800
CE 188/9
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2762
CE 188/9
P.Oxy.LXVII 4585
January-February 189
P.Oxy.XLI 2968
Between 28 August and 25 September CE 190

P.Oxy.XLVII 3339
18 December 191
P.Oxy.XXII 2340
13 March CE 192
P.Oxy.LXVI 4531
28 June 196
P.Oxy.XLI 2975
1 October CE 198
P.Oxy.XLII 3019
9 March 200

P.Oxy.XXXI 2611
CE 192/3
P.Oxy.LXV 4483
194
P.Oxy.LXV 4484
April-May 197
P.Oxy.XLIV 3167
195 - 198
P.Oxy.XLIX 3474
197-8
P.Oxy.XLVII 3363
(a) 198-199 (?); (b) 199-200 (?)
P.Oxy.XLII 3072
c. 197 - 200 CE
P.Oxy.LVII 3911
199 CE
P.Oxy.XXIII 2371
About CE 200

P.Oxy.LX 4038
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4031
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4033
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4027
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4040
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4043
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX. 4053
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4034
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4045
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4032
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LIII 3708
Second (or third?) century
P.Oxy.LX 4041
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4054
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4037
Second or third century
P.Oxy. LX 4050
Second or third century

P.Oxy.XXXVI 2749
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXII 2329
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2537
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LVII 3881
Second-third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4580
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2639
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LIX 3993
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2983
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4560
Late second/third century
P.Oxy.LII 3687
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XIX 2218
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4332
Second/third century
P.Oxy.L 3528
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3158
Second or third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2619
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LVII 3889
Second-third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4310
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XLII 3012
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2363
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4302
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4408
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2816
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4641
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2449
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2629
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3153
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2370
About CE 200
P.Oxy.LVII 3898
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2366
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLII 3005
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XLV 3227
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2362
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4405 (more of P.Oxy.XXXIV 2683)
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.LIX 3991
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LVI 3839
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXI 4102
Second-third century
P.Oxy.LII 3649
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4339
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4311
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXVIII 2488
Late second or early third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4417
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVI 4533
Late first/early second century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2448
Late second or early third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4304
Late second/third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4465
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XXI 2300
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XVII 2086 Commentary (on Comedy)[spacing]; Rhetoric Treatise [mg format, spacing]
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2778
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2948
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4572
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LXI 4093
Later Second/Third century
P.Oxy.LIV 3726
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXI 4100
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XXXIII 2680
Second / third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2373
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LII 3659
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2405
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4415
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2538
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXI 4105
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3434
Third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4424
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2806
Second or third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2985
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4668
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3438
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3444
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4647
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4470
Second or third century
P.Oxy.XV 1800 Miscellaneous Biographies [ekthesis, mg stroke, abbrev ##, eol filler]
Late second / early third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4318
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4547
Late second or third century
P.Oxy.XIX 2215
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LIII 3702
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3453
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XXI 2290
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XXXV 2741
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4665
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2986
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XLII 3007
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXII 2323
Later second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 3323
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2703
Front: c. CE 200; Back: Late third century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4666
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3448
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4426 Commentary (on Aratus) roll [spacing ? (no left mg)]
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXII 2322
Second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2539
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LX 4068
March-April 200
P.Oxy.XLV 3251
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XLV 3221
Second - third century
P.Oxy.LXI 4108
Second-third century
P.Oxy.LIX 3971
Late second/third century
P.Oxy.L 3530
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2982
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2423
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4459 (more of Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana PL III/294 A (ed.R. Pintaudi, Eirene 32, 1996, 96-97))
Late second or third century
P.Oxy.XXI 2302
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2645
c. CE 200
P.Oxy.LIII 3706
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3460
Second - third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4419
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4562
Late second/third century
P.Oxy.LII 3656
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4473
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4414
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXIX 2890
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LV 3809
Second / third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2943
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LVII 3899
Second-third century
P.Oxy.LVI 3849
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3201
Third century
P.Oxy.LII 3670
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXVI 2438
Late second or early third century
P.Oxy.LV 3810
Second / third century
P.Oxy.XLVII 3321
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2653
Second or third century
P.Oxy.LX 4052
Late first or early second century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2424
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2646
Second to third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2949
Late second or early third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2652
Second or third century
P.Oxy.XLI 2984
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4578
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XX 2263
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LXVI 4539
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2793
Second /third century
P.Oxy.XVII 2093
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.L 3590
Second / third century
P.Oxy.XLVIII 3382
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XLVIII 3370
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XLII 3008
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XLVIII 3383
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXI 2296
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLII 2999
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXXIV 2689
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLII 3084
Second to third century
P.Oxy.XV 1802
Late second / early third century
P.Oxy.XXXVII 2813
Late second or third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4463
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XLVIII 3374
Late second - early third century
P.Oxy.XLIII 3130
Second - third century
P.Oxy.LXVIII 4669
First/second century?
P.Oxy.XXXI 2544
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4471
Late second /early third century
P.Oxy.LII 3651
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4423
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXII 4316
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XVII 2077
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2361
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2394
Late second/ early third
P.Oxy.XXVI 2446
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LII 3681
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4422
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVI 4505
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2575
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3155
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXI 2308
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XXXI 2553
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LVI 3822
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XLV 3226
Second - third century
P.Oxy.LII 3655
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXI 4104
Second-third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4592
Late second or early third century
P.Oxy.XXV 2427
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LVII 3887
Second or third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3436
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXIV 2414
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XLIX 3437
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XLV 3231
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4464
Second-third century
P.Oxy.XX 2256
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LII 3661
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LII 3673
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XXI 2305
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.XXII 2313
Late first/ early second century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3200
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XLIV 3151
Second - third century
P.Oxy.LV 3799
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXIV 4403
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4486
Late second/mid-third century
P.Oxy.LVI 3838
Second/third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4567
Second/third century
P.Oxy.XXXII 2643
Second to third centuries
P.Oxy.LXV 4474
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2380
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXV 4476
Late second/early third century
P.Oxy.XXXVI 2751
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 4563
Late second/third century
P.Oxy.XVIII 2175
Second/ third century
P.Oxy.LXVII 3327
Later second/third century
P.Oxy.XXII 2312
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XLII 3013
Second - third century
P.Oxy.XXIII 2382
Late second/ early third century
P.Oxy.XLVIII 3378
Late second - early third century

P.Oxy.XLIV 3169
Between 190 and 212

P.Oxy.XXXVII 2813 Commentary on Eupolis ed. E. Lobel roll [diacrits/abbrevs?]

Late second or third century

4098 mythographic (image) [ekthesis, spacing]

3rd century

4460 mythographic [margin strokes, sectioning]

3rd century

NOTE: only a few (less than 5?) later "Commentaries" in POxy genre search!

[out of order/place in search]

P.Oxy.XVII 2105
CE 231-236 ? (BL VII, 143-144)
P.Oxy.XLII 3036
24 February 298

--

From Eldon Epp's paper for this session:

\8/ Manuscripts of the Jewish Greek Bible (including Apocrypha) -- whether they are Jewish in origin and use or Christian is a complex issue -- are P.Oxy. 403, 656, 845, 846,1007,1010,1073, 1074, 1075, 1076, 1166, 1167, 1168, 1225, 1226, 1351, 1352, 1594, 1595, 1779, 2066, 2386, 3522, 4442, 4443, 4444, P.Harr. 31, P.Mil.R.Univ. 1.22, and PSI X. 1163. For Philo, P.Oxy. 1173, 1356, 2158; PSI XI.1207; P.Haun. I.8.
CPJ does include the "semi-literary" "Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs" (CPJ 2.154-159, including P.Oxy. 1089, 1242, 33 + P.Yale inv. 1536 -- from the late second and third centuries), fictional accounts reflecting earlier anti-Jewish sentiments in Alexandria.
I have not treated these groups of Oxyrhynchus materials in the present paper, due to limitations of space, but primarily because of difficulty in determining whether the post-first century C.E. biblical and related manuscripts were copied and used by Jews or Christians. The same question applies to the Philo manuscripts.

\9/ Fikhman, "Les Juifs d'Ιgypte," 226, points to only three new Oxyrhynchus papyri: P.Oxy. 3203 and 3805, surely Jewish; and P.Oxy. 3314 (Letter of Judas), potentially Jewish. Now P.Oxy. 2745 and CPA VII.2 would be included.

P.Oxy.XXXVI 2745
Onomasticon of Hebrew Names
ed. D. Rokeah 3/4th c roll (Origen?)

Barnabas' TIH lesson assumes abbreviated numbers (in Genesis?); possibly in a Jewish produced MS. See also use of suspended names to identify amphitheater seat ownership -- BAR 2002 ?

 

JBL 121 (2002) 366ff review by Roy Jeal of Hengel The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Collection and Origin of the Canonical Gospels (ET John Bowden) Trinity Press International 2000: "Hengel claims that the Gospels did not first appear anonymously, that they were originally written on codices, not scrolls, and went into circulation very quickly" (367). "The fourth chapter, "'The Cross-Check': The Origin of the Collection of the Four Gospels and the Christian Book Cupboard -- AN Attempt at Reconstruction," offers a description of how the four gospels are likely to have been used in early Christian worship, the method of their production (originals and copies), and the method of storage and retrieval. ... following common synagogue practice ... [a cupboard] so that texts could be easily located. Hengel believes that these libraries held the Gospels (and likely the letters) as codices, and that it is probable that the codices carried written titles."

 

4. K.A. Worp and A. Rijksbaron, eds. The Isocrates Codex from Kellis,

Oxford: Oxbow, 1997; R. S. Bagnall, ed. The Kellis Agricultural Account

Book, Oxford: Oxbow, 1997.

 

http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/egypt/xegycat.html#59

http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/egypt/xegy.html#62

 

---

 

http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:MIyQVZOvwPkJ:gertoux.online.fr/divinename/getbook/ordering/name_story1.doc+ihesus+iesus+abbreviation&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 (tetragrammaton history) =

http://gertoux.online.fr/divinename/getbook/ordering/name_story1.doc

Gerard Gertoux, Paradox of the Anonymous Name The Name of God (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002).

 

The Name of God Y.EH.OW.AH Which is Pronounced as It is Written I_EH_OU_AH
Gertoux, Gérard
$47.00 Lanhan, MD: University Press of America, 2002
pp. 328 Paperback

 

---

 

[RAK] Roberts estimated column height at "rather more than 30 lines and c. 28 cm. [11 inches]" with the average of 27 letters per line, or c. 10 cm. [4 inches] "Rolls of this format ...were commonly but not always de luxe editions" [ref to Schubart] (24f).

 

On early serifed fonts see Turner\1 #54 Thucydides PHamb 646 mid 3 bce

written area of complete col = 21-22 cm tall [8.25 inches]

 

#12 Homer Iliad mid 2 bce: serifs frequent; c 20 cm high [8 inches](est RAK) -- has abbrev # for stichos 200 ?

 

#20 Ibycus 2nd bce: serifs

 

SIZE comparisons: p/l height  mgs (block) [lines] | width [letters] intercol

Rylands 458 Deut p 28 cm  30 | 10 cm  27

4QLev\a l 20 cm  1.3 28 |  10 cm 47-48 0.8

4QLev\b p 25 cm  34 | 11 cm  27-34 

Fouad Gen (a) p | 15 cm 36

Fouad Deut(b) p 24 cm  3.5/4 16 21-23 |  11.5 cm 37 1.5-0.2

Fouad Deut(c) p 24 cm  16.4 21 |  17 cm 24 1.0

4QLXXNum  l 25 cm  34 | 11 cm  27-34 1.5

Minor Prs A/B l 35 cm  42/33 | 10 cm  1.7

POxy Job p ??  | 19-22

POxy Esther p 30 cm  5 20 31  | 7 cm 25  2 

 

 

PFouad (Turner #56) est 33 lines / col, writing 23-24 cm tall [9.25 inches + 1 inch each mg = 11.25 total?] , [27-30 lett / line]

 

["b"]The height of the roll was about 24 cm, with 21-23 lines per column, while the preserved columns vary from about 15.5 to 16.5 cm wide (about 37 letters per line, average, but line endings are irregular and the final letters sometimes cramped), and the width of vertical margins varies from about 1.5 cm down to 0.2 cm(!), with a tendency for the lower lines gradually to "move" their beginnings more to the left ("Mass' Law"). Similarly, there is a tendency for the top lines in a column to have more space between them than those at the bottom.

 

["c"]The height of the roll may have been about 24 cm (as with #848, item 8 above), with about 21 lines per column, but the width of the columns was much smaller, around 17 cm [sic! check] (about 24 letters per line, average, but with a great deal of variation), and the width of vertical margins may have been around 1 cm.

 

4QLXXLev\a

Full scroll height about 20 cm, with at least 1.3 cm top margin and 1.5 bottom; about 28 lines per column, with an average of 47- 48 letters per line (about 10 cm wide, with at least .8 cm between columns). There are faint traces of horizontal guidelines, with the letters dropped from the line. This produces greater linearity at the top of the roughly bilinear (with FY extending both above and below, and BRU and occasionally I below) upright informal round (tending to oval in places) rather cramped writing. Sporadic ornamentation, with left hooks at the feet of some RF letters, and a downward hook sometimes on the left horizontal of T. No shading. See Turner's "informal round" style?

 

4QLXXLev\b

A tall scroll, about 31 cm high (about 38 lines per column), with columns of about 10-11 cm in width (23-29 letters).

 

4QLXXNum

Large format, more than 25 cm tall (34 lines per column), with columns about 10.5-11 cm wide (27-34 letters per line) and perhaps a 1.5 cm margin between. Some use of spacing. Iota adscript. Highly decorated pronouncedly bilinear round/square hand (some oval letters, which tend to lean backwards) with no shading, similar to #802 (item 7 above). No occurrence of the tetragrammaton. A few corrections.

 

Minor Prophets

Dimensions can vary somewhat from column to column (especially widths), but in general the material was about 35 cm tall (42 lines per column for hand A, 33 for hand B) with column widths averaging around 9 cm (7.5-11.5 range), and about 1.7 average margins between. It is possible that the original scroll was around 10 meters long, if it was a single scroll containing all the Minor Prophets. It is also possible that two separate scrolls (hand A and hand B, thus #943a-b) are represented by the fragments. The leather inscribed by hand B is also coarser than that by hand A.

 

POxy Job

Dimensions may be as small as 14 cm tall (15 lines per column), or as large as 29 cm (39 lines) or even 32 cm (46 lines), depending on the identification of the poorly represented (3 legible letters!) 2nd column, with 19-22 letters per line. Informal (even careless) upright bilinear (some ovals, tending to lean left) with moderate ornamentation (mostly by hooks on some vertical strokes); no shading; some ligatures and cursive tendencies; dieresis/trema on the initial letter of I+WB.

 

POxy Esther

About 30 cm tall, with writing block 20 cm (31 lines) by 7 cm (25 letters average) and about 2 cm between columns. Has paragraph markers with enlarged initial letters of next line projecting into the left margin, and initial letters of most other lines also enlarged. Otherwise relatively bilinear with minimal ornamentation (some hooks and flourishes), and various "documentary" tendencies (ligatures, cursive forms, etc.).

 

 

---

 

THE WRITING WORLD OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

by Rochelle Altman

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/altman_dss.html

 

WRITING SYSTEMS AND MANUSCRIPTS1

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/altman_writing.html

 

by Rochelle I. Altman

risa@mail.hol.gr

risa3@netvision.net.il (Rochelle I. Altman) Oct 02

 

...

Meanwhile, on the African side of the Ancient Near East, the Egyptians were writing on papyrus, a material made from the leaves of a reed-like plant. Papyrus is produced by laying strips of the inner layers of the plant (pith), one edge on another. The height of a papyrus roll was limited by the height of the strips of pith peeled off the inner layers of the plant. A leaf 12 inches high was costly while a leaf 14 inches high was very rare. A papyrus roll 9 inches or more in height was always a luxury item.

 

The Greeks had originally received their writing systems from the Asian side. When Alexander and his army conquered Egypt, they brought with them the Asian Near Eastern rules governing size. These size rules created a problem because they required that the law codes and government orders be the highest and the largest documents. Papyrus rolls high enough to attain the "correct" 14 inch size were in very short supply. The Greeks solved the problem by rotating the direction of writing ninety degrees. Greek official documents were 9 to 10 inches high by 14 or more inches wide. In turn, when Rome conquered Egypt from the Ptolemaic Greeks, the Romans adopted the rotation; they also increased the width of their legal documents to show that they were the ones in charge.

 

The writing material forced a ninety degree rotation in order to maintain the correct size hierarchy. This simple physical difficulty played an important role in creating a distinction between traditions. By the third century BCE the great diversity among authoritative and official formats and sizes crystallized into two primary streams: Semitic and Graeco-Roman.

 

On one side we find the Semitic descendants of the Phoenician system, which used different official scripts, but retained ancient practices almost intact. In this tradition, authoritative official texts were written in narrow columns, by utterance or breathings, that is, as spoken, and suspended from the upper writing limit. For example, the Hebrew practice was (and is) to divide the 8-9 inches reading area into two narrow columns, each approximately 3-1/2 to 4 inches wide. Even after the codex gained popularity over the scroll, the format remained essentially unchanged. Non-official, yet authoritative, documents were written in broad columns. Law codes were 14 inches in height with a reading area of 8-9 inches in width, _plus_ margins. Writings were somewhat shorter, around 11 inches. Secular documents, such as tax receipts, were smaller yet and varied in size depending upon the type of tax. Harking back to Akkad, deeds of sale, for example, were always narrow, around 3 to 3-1/2 inches in width, but varied in height depending upon the status of the seller.

 

...

...Eventually, the strictly bilinear Etrusco-Roman official sizes and formats fused with the trilinear Greek authoritative ones. The combined Latin Graeco-Roman official documents appear written in broad columns and in _scripto continuo_. Official single sheets were 12 inches high by 14 or more inches wide while official papyrus codices were 12 inches in height by 8-9 inches in width, *including* margins. Writings were 9-9-1/2 inches in height. Authoritative, but non-official, texts appear in narrow column format. In this tradition, the size of a tax receipt also depended upon the type of tax and the issuee. (People had to pay for the papyrus in their receipts. A typical low status receipt runs 3 x 5 inches.) Deeds of sale retained the ancient Akkadian practice and appear as very narrow leaves of papyrus.

 

Some sizes, however, are the same no matter what the political affiliation. A single size and format of document appears in both traditions. These texts run around 8 to 8-1/2 inches in height by 4-1/4 inches in width, or roughly a sheet of modern letterhead paper folded in half horizontally. In size, the resulting folded paper emulates the writing surface of a wax tablet.

 

...

More to the point, the oldest clear example of an authoritative serifed Greek font shows up in a fragment of Deuteronomy dated to the first half of the 2nd century BCE from Egypt (John Rylands Library, Papyrus 111,458, fragments, Manchester, England). Deuteronomy was hardly an official text of the Ptolemaic Greek government; it was an official text of the Jewish population of Alexandria. That a Graeco-Judean authoritative font would have serifs is to be expected: official Square Aramaic fonts are serifed. Further, the serifs of this font design follow the Aramaic practice of heavy serifs as opposed to the thin serifs used by Rome. Other than the serifs in Aramaic style, the font follows Greek practices: it is monoline, the mensural base of this script design is still the wider Greek 'o', and the written text still displays very loose kerning.

 

---

 

[risa on Bangor draft]

 

[Of course there is diversity! It would be astonishing if there weren't.

 We have a collection of different classes of works here. Some of those

 scrolls are private editions, copies made by some person for his or her

 own use. Some of those scrolls are "authorized" versions, and some are

 bookshop productions.

 

 Private editions, quite obviously, will vary tremendously according to

 literacy level of the person writing. Is the person accustomed to writing

 on an everyday basis? Then the work will be competent, perhaps not as

 professional as a master scribe's, but competent. It will also be full of

 his or her personal idiosyncracies, such as the use of the tetragrammaton.

 Is the person someone who writes infrequently? Then the work will appear

 amateurish.

 

 "Authorized" translations will use an authoritative format and a formal

 script; it's size will be the correct one for the hierarchy.

 

 Bookshop productions will vary from Class A to Class C -- depending upon

 what the customer was willing to pay. (As is made perfectly clear in

 Roman documents on the different requirements for each class.) What pre-4th

 century docs survive is a mixed bag of different classes, we cannot, for

 example, make any comments about the execution of a script without first

 determining what Class book we are dealing with. Is the example a Class C?

 Then the margins will be small, the writing squeezed in, and the doc careless

 in execution. Does that make the execution "degenerate"? No; it makes it what

 the customer paid for.

 

 In other words, you absolutely must sort the docs into their classes before

 you can come to any conclusions about each group and what these differences

 indicate.

 

 Step 1: Your first sort is by the level of formality of the script. Cursive

 scripts are *never* used in a formal document, repeat, never. If the script

 is cursive, the doc is either a private edition or a bookshop product.

 Is the script formal, but not official? Then it's a class A bookshop

 product... it will have wider margins and care will be taken in execution.

 

 Step 2:

 If the script is cursive, you now have to sort by size and then by format.

 I included a condensed guide to some of the formats and sizes in standard

 use in both the Greco-Roman and the African-Semitic hierarchies in that on-

 line lecture for Jim Davila's Qumran seminar... "The Writing World of the

 Dead Sea Scrolls."  http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/altman_dss.html.

 The table also incudes Greco-Roman and Jewish-Chistian practices. I see no

 reason to repeat it here when it is available on-line.

 

 As many of these early docs are fragments, you will have to depend primarily

 upon script and format.

 

 For a doc found at Qumran, the chances are quite high that it is written

 under the African-Semitic hierarchies. To put this another way; when the

 Greeks adopted the Phoenician writing system back in the 9th BCE, they

 also adopted the Semitic hierarchies. Ptolemaic Greek docs use the Semitic

 hierarchies; Seleucid docs rotate. (See my Zoilos Report on the ORION site

 to see how this works.) Date is another item you have to take into

 consideration. There is far too much diachronic smear in your lecture;

 it nullifies your conclusions.

 

 Once you have sorted the docs by class, hierarchies, and dates, then you

 can start collating data.]

 

[No, the "bound-book format" was not "new." Nor, I might add, was it

 confined to "rough schoolbooks." Literary wax-tablet books show up at

 Pompeii and Herculaneum right along with the far more common scroll. As the

 Romans were as fad happy and novelty hungry as Modern Americans, it's not

 surprising that we read references to the "codex" around 70 CE. And you are

 emphasizing as a "technological" development what was a change in market

 demand. What is being ignored is that the Romans did not invent the wax-

 tablet; as I recall, a wax-tablet frame was found in the remains of a Semitic

 shipwreck from ca. 1000 BCE. It was even mentioned on IOUDAIOS; ask Sigrid

 about it, she brought it up. I sincerely doubt that the tablet bound-book

 was a Roman invention, it was too "novel"  -- just about had to be imported.

 Being made of such perishable materials makes it very difficult to find even

 pieces of wax tablets. Still, I do believe that Sigrid has a piece of info

 that you can use in your argument.]

 

[The strictly bilinear writing limits are a result of the Augustan reforms

 of the late 1st BCE. Bilinear limits "freeze" the text and are the limit

 systems used by mystically-oriented societies. Hence, official and formal

 texts in Egypt, Etruria and then Rome used bilinear writing limits. Informal

 and un-official texts from Rome, even Etruria, use trilinear limits; the Greek

 and Semitic writing systems used trilinear limits.

 

 [1) If you wish to use this term, the standard use is either "scriptum

 continuum" or "written in scripto continuo." The term, however, is quite

 erroneous. The reason for no spacing is pragmatic: the texts, and that

 includes the Greek Biblical codices you mention later, are written in

 "utterances" or "breathings," that is, the words that can be said in one

 breath. Look again at some of the early Greek docs. In broad column execution,

 small spaces appear after an "utterance" but not during one. In narrow column

 format, each line is an utterance. Simple when you know what you're looking

 at, no?

 

 2) Of what use is added punctuation in a writing system that employs writing

 by utterance? None. The right-hand margin _is_ the punctuation; why waste

 scribal time to add puntuation.

3) "the world of professional documents was more flexible." Not on your nelly!

 This is totally and completely wrong: It had extremely tight restrictions

 with required scripts, formats, and sizes for each and every class of docs,

 from a receipt for local taxes, to recipts for arnona, to petitions. What you

 are picking up as "flexible" results from conflating docs from one locale with

 docs from another. There was precious little leeway granted in any type of

 "professional" document.

 

 The seemingly great "flexibilty" is not there at all. Hierarchies are

 dependent upon locale and will vary within a specific permissible range

 depending the status of the issuer; the local deviations within the primary

 hierarchy, and the content.

 

 These restrictions also made it simple for the Governor of a Nome, for

 instance, to know where a document came from. When tax receipts from X must

 be 3" x 6" and receipts from Y must be 2.5" x 5.5," and from Z must be 3.5" x

 6" -- it makes it simple in a case for back taxes to see if the defendant

 really paid the taxes to the proper locale.... and so on down to the smallest

 transaction and throughout the Imperium!

It's the world of professional bookshops that had flexibility; government

 docs most certainly did not. And don't confuse a chancery script with a

 commercial script or a formal Class A bookscript with an official script.]

 ----------------------

 BTW, my article, "The Size of the Law: Document Dimensions and their

 Significance in the Imperial Administration" appears in _Confrontation

 in Late Antiquity_ out next year from Orchard Academic.

 -----------------------------------------------------

 

Of course letters seem to hang from the top line in both Greek and Hebrew

 docs. The graphs hang from the top line in trilinear systems and the Greek

 system was borrowed from the NorthWest Semitic systems.

 

 Oh, please: all script designs are "highly sophisticated," from Sumerian

 cuneiform to modern laser printer designs. To pick one out as better

 than another, while quite common, is an application of modern aesthetics

 and preferences to artefacts from the past. The application of modern

 preferences belongs to the study of modern aesthetics. A reference to the

 lettering as being "highly sophisticated" is an aesthetic judgement based

 on Modern expectations; it is the mark of the calligraphic point of view

 and has little to do with the performance of a working scribe.

 

 You can refer to professional vs. non-professional or amateur, or to works

 produced by Master scribes. Also, formal vs informal, official vs unofficial,

 and other terms along these lines address scribal performance and not modern

 aesthetics. One can hardly compare "formal" with "amateur" in any case... it

 is false analogy.

 

Whether a doc is produced by a Master or not is always clear. And as far

 as "less carefully executed" goes -- and what class doc is it? What you are

 saying is that the "professional" quality docs are Class A while the others

 are Class B or even C.]

 

[Writing by word division is normal for business letters in the Ptolemic and

 later Roman world. Also, which DSS are by utterance and which are by semantic

 unit? Date? Level of formality? Class of document? It makes quite a difference.

 The Exodus fragments in the formal Square Script is written by "utterance."

 This may or may not be "characteristic" of Jewish scribal practices. On the

 other hand, do remember that Greek parsing units are of substantially greater

 length on the average than Hebrew. This difference would necessarily be

 reflected in the written record.]

 

[Modern preferences. How can there be "unanimity"! The "witnesses" come from

 all over the place; from different religious parties; and from different time

 frames. Look, among the DSS are some "authorized"  versions and quite a few

 bookshop products; most are private editions. How can anyone expect any level

 of conformity about the use of the Tetragrammaton when so many of the examples

 are the subject of private whim. Those private editions where the

 tetragrammaton is replaced by dots tell us that the person writing was

 superstitious indeed!

 The Exodus frags show the tetragrammaton in ordinary square letter, and the

 paleo-frags do not differentiate either. Yes, the tetragrammaton appears in

 paleo in square letter docs. From 11QPs, this would be seem to have been the

 approved manner as this scroll happens to be an authorized text. Even so, the

 use of "antique" graphs for the name of a "God" in a text executed in a

 "modern" script is a Babylonian practice and obviously intended to placate

 conservatives who were against the use of Square script. (And this also is

 mentioned in that lecture along with a professional analysis of the

 consolidated script.)]

 

[1) Happy to see you quote that "carelessly executed"; that's a mark of

 the calligraphic point of view for sure. What they are saying is that

 many of these docs are either Class C bookshop or privately produced

 by people not accustomed to writing on a daily basis.

 [2)Does writing "degenerate"? No, this is another aesthetic judgement

 from the calligraphic point of view. The "simplicity" merely reflects

 the known desire by early Christians to distance themselves from "Pagan"

 practices. Further, how many of these "degenerated" docs are executed by

 private people and how many by professional scribes? BTW, if writing has

 degenerated so much, why is this "phenomenon" not apparent in other parts

 of the former Empire??]

 

[1) Do I have to go into the scriptum continuum aspect again? 2)"extremely

 attractive"? Modern aesthetics again, also in 3) bilinear lettering --

 which merely means freeze the words so their magic can be contained and used.

 4) Those are not "Classical Greek norms." The Vaticanus borrows its authority

 from Pre-Classic Greece; the Siniaticus, Alexandrinus, and Bezae borrow their

 authority from Rome. 5) And the large scale codices are the result of

 Christianity gaining official status. It's politics, not theology.]

 

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